


Turn and Turn and Turn to Dust

by BeastOfTheSea



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Rekka no Ken
Genre: Angst, Backstory, Depression, Gen, Guilt, Insanity, Misanthropy, Oneshot, POV Second Person, Pre-Canon, Self-Destruction, Self-Hatred
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-10
Updated: 2014-07-10
Packaged: 2018-02-08 07:27:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,418
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1932015
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BeastOfTheSea/pseuds/BeastOfTheSea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nergal between the Scouring and Arcadia.<br/>Major spoilers for Chapter 19xx.</p><p> </p><p>  <b>If you are sensitive to depression or any related issue, please pay close attention to the tags.</b></p>
            </blockquote>





	Turn and Turn and Turn to Dust

**Author's Note:**

> This isn't in line with my usual Nergal characterization. (In other words, this isn't parallel with [Stand There and Watch Me Burn](http://archiveofourown.org/works/524831).) Call it more an... experiment, I suppose.
> 
>  **Disclaimer:** Fire Emblem and all related characters belong to Nintendo and Intelligent Systems. Title is taken from "Dancin' in the Ruins" by Blue Oyster Cult.

Everything you've ever loved has gone to ruin.

Well, that's all right, really. It's fair. The rest of the world has fallen apart, too.

You're vaguely aware something has broken in your mind, but you don't care. It's all right. There's no point in caring any more.

You've failed everyone you loved, and there will never be a point in caring again.

You prop your back up against a tree and watch the world burn. You can hear the dying screams of dragons from here. You can watch the final agonies of people whose lungs are too weak for this altered air, and see the victims piled up in heaps. The "fair winds of the Ending Winter", you hear them called sarcastically in what remains of the towns: for everyone has decided this was the end long prophesied, Fimbulvetr come at last.

You hope it is, but something nagging at the end of your mind tells you that it's not. The Ice Dragons are either fled or dead by now. It would be a true tragedy - a perverse, unspeakable tragedy - if the final winter came without them.

You don't know why that of all things bothers you now, but it does. Perhaps you've just lost your wits and even the most minor things bother you now. You hope you have. But you were always somehow under the impression that being insane was more carefree than this.

Well, you are oddly calm, all things considered. Perhaps this is actually insanity and you don't realize it.

You don't mind. It's very peaceful.

It's as though you won't even notice when death finally claims you.

* * *

It doesn't.

The world's dared to go on, even with everything you loved destroyed.

The Generals even had the audacity to put it back together.

Not perfectly, not perfectly: you can feel the flaws, the twisting in the air, the barrenness of the land. But that's all in relative terms. Those who lived through this will know the difference, but the next generation won't. Their elders will tell them, but it will be only a myth of a golden age to their ignorant ears. And then their children will come and they will tell them vaguely what their forefathers said, but they won't know any better than their children do, and time will come and time will go and someday even the myth will disappear.

You know. She taught you the impermanence of all that is human.

She taught you so many things, and she taught the world so many things, but that didn't matter, did it? The world doesn't appreciate saints. It only appreciates a fist in the teeth. A kick in the kneecap. A knife in the heart.

You know the order of the world now. You always did, in the end. Your only heartbreak is that you never told her in time - that you let her kindness and her charity and her faith in humans bind your eyes and lull you to sleep, forgetting that there's nothing in the dark that isn't mirrored in the waking world of life.

It's your fault.

You had no excuse to be good, to believe in a better world. You had no excuse to settle down and be happy. You had no excuse to take her hand, smiling, and let her help you forget all you knew of hatred and contempt for humankind. You can never be forgiven for any of that. You knew better. You knew better even at the time. You just _wanted_ to believe something else. And she was so convinced, and so strong-willed, and so determined to make life better for the humans of Ilia that you couldn't disbelieve her. You didn't dare.

And she paid the price for your weakness.

You should have never thought yourself safe unless you could crush any foe. You should never have trusted that love would be enough. You should have never have believed, simply because you would do anything for the children, that _anything_ would be enough.

It's your fault. It's all your fault. And you can never be redeemed, and never be forgiven, because this isn't a matter of _morality_. It's a matter of harsh truth and weakness. All the morality in the world won't pay a single coin back towards the price of cleansing your failure, any more than sweet prayers can call back from the darkness a soul that's been devoured.

There is no force in this world that both ultimately matters and _cares_. Perhaps the gods that the priests worship exists. But the darkness is older than they. The darkness is greater than nature - from the void all things came, and to the void all things return. The priests may be able to beat it back for a little while. But when they are old, and their joints crumble and make them cry out in the night, and their organs weaken in their chests and turn the freshest air into swamp-gas, and their skin thins and tears like old fabric and bleeds from the slightest scratch - what comes for the priests, in the end? Is it truly their gods, or is it the darkness? And what will come for their gods, at the end of all things?

The darkness is absolute, and in the image of the darkness this world is made.

And if one wishes to change anything in this world - to make one's existence at all worthwhile - one must enter the darkness.

And master it.

You must have it at any cost.

You'll make up for your errors.

You cannot turn it back. But you will unmake what's been done, and remake what's been undone.

It's the only way you can show your love for her. All your mourning and all the sweet words you could say are nothing more than crying into the wind. All the grand gestures of grief you could ever make are nothing more than the useless twiddling of a lazy child, pretending that nonsense rituals will make any ill better.

This is your _only_ option. If you do otherwise - if you move on - if you try to live your own life - then you never loved her.

You whine about it. You wish you could do something else. You wish you had someone to talk to, someone who cared about you, someone who would tell you it was all right or even that it might someday be all right.

You had someone, now didn't you? And she died because _you were too worthless to do anything_.

Now stop whining and get to work.

You have all of eternity left to do it, after all. Why don't you stop whining and do this _one thing_ for the woman you claimed you loved more than the world?

* * *

Time passes. The seasons pass.

They've got winged horses now in Ilia. You wonder what abomination of the Ending Winter spawned _that_. They're even trying to tame them now, the miserable people of Ilia.

She would hate you if she saw you smiling at their suffering. But you are, oh, you are. They thought they were better off without the Ice Dragons, now did they? They thought they could make a go of it on their own? They thought mighty humanity could conquer all ills?

Now they struggle to keep half their children alive through hard winters. There are unpleasant rumors of cannibalism, now, though no respectable village has that attached to their name. Food has to come from somewhere. It turns out it's not very easy to get food, when you're not under the protection of a giant sharp-toothed, fearsome-clawed beast that never feels the cold.

You never deserved her and this is just proof of that. You never deserved her, and she would indeed have torn you to pieces if she'd ever known everything that passed through your mind. She could be merciful. Perhaps she just would have banished you from Ilia and had nothing to do with you at all.

But she isn't here to see you, and so your soul is dulled and empty as you walk through the villages and watch their misery. Perhaps a bit of a numb smirk tugs at your mouth when no one's looking your way. It's really quite impressive. The curses of the priests go only to the seventh generation, but oh, you think this one will go quite a bit further than that.

They swear taming the winged horses will save them. You seriously doubt that. They say it will make Ilia as mighty as Bern. Yes, Bern, with the dragons' half-wit cousins broken and ridden like horses...

You doubt it. You were born in what would become Bern. They always were a hard people, hateful of any dominance save their own, willing to do anything to increase their own power. There was a reason the Scouring began in Bern, and why the human leader came from that region. Ilia was always crushed under the might of nature, given breathing space for a time by the dragons who were native to that land and who found pity in their hearts for the shivering immigrants from afar. The Ilians will _never_ reclaim what they had in the time of Aenir.

It hurts to think the name. What were you thinking of, remembering it? You knew better. You were contentedly numb. Now the wound is open again, and it hurts, it hurts _so much_.

You leave Ilia, and this time you won't make the mistake of going back.

Maybe they will tame those feathered nags. Who knows? The whispers are that only maidens can ride them, but of course they're trying to get big, strong men onto the winged creatures' backs. It's not women's lot to fight in war, they brag. That's their duty. It would emasculate them, should women be able to fight as the riders of Bern, but men be left behind to tend the farms. It goes against nature. It could never be so, surely?

You hope it very much could be so, out of pure spite. It would give you a good laugh. You need a laugh. You haven't had one in so long.

Not that you deserve one anyway. She's _dead._ The children are _banished_. Who are you to whine, like some self-pitying drunk, that you need a _laugh_?

* * *

You're in the desert.

You've exhausted every place else. Nabata was a great civilization - before the Scouring. In the face of Nabata at its peak, Eturia is but a pale shadow. It's sheer hilarity that they should think so well of their magical prowess when the least of its lords could have beaten the Mage General to death with a stave and not received more than a sunburn in return.

But the Ending Winter came, and now nothing remains of great Nabata but sand, ruins, and a few great statues. Fitting, really. Ozymandias always was a pompous ass of a king, and it entertains you to think that now all his ridiculous inscriptions are food for the sandstorms.

Nabata's treasures remain beneath the sands, however. And Eturia, even were it not rotten with priests, could not hold a candle to that lost knowledge. It might never recover the full knowledge under the influence of the priests and all their pious ways, even given a thousand years.

Yes, the priests. The priests who saw nothing wrong with killing those who were not human, or who did not conform to the precise letter of their beliefs, or those who dared to question their knowledge. The priests who simpered that they were holier for all their bloodthirst and more sacrosanct for all that they gave the poor nothing but kind words while the cardinals rolled in plenty. The priests who swore obedience to nothing but the gods and bent the knee to nothing but nobles' money.

You think Eturia deserves whatever it gets, really. Any land of scholars that submits its mind to piety has given up all right to be called intelligent.

As you did, when you believed her hopes for a better future rather than your cynical knowledge that people never changed.

So are you so much the wiser?

But you're letting your mind wander again. Ill-disciplined. Who are you to have a mind, unless it's bent towards the service of your goal? What gives you the idea that you deserve one? Certainly you haven't used it for anything useful. If you had, perhaps she'd still be alive, now wouldn't she? Or perhaps the children wouldn't be left amongst a people who had lost their homes to humans - and are the children alive or dead? Why, you don't know, do you? Worse than useless as a father, really, as you've been worse than useless for whatever role you've ever claimed - and left to shift for themselves. Why, perhaps  _many_ things might be different, were you not so weak. 

You should think of that, really, the next time you allow yourself off in your own mind. What have you done to deserve the existence of a "you", again? Piety and charity aside, existence is earned. That's the law of nature. It's only the higher beings who have the intellect to conceive of a delusion as ingenious as the "right" to existence. And you, well, you may have earned the _physical_ fact of existence, but the mental? The spiritual?

You would make yourself suffer more for it, but your suffering is nothing but disgusting avoidance of the effort. Everything you are that is not bent towards the goal is wastefulness and disgusting avoidance - your pain as well as your pleasure. You exist to become powerful. To snap the laws of nature in twain. (You know it can be done. You saw the Ending Winter. You know that once, a Druid succeeded, and became Bramimond.) To _bring her back._

But the emptiness of Bramimond is not what you desire. Bramimond was power incarnate - and only power incarnate. No will. It fought dragons because they were there. That was all. But you have a will. A purpose.

What would your effort be worth, if you gained the needed power and lost all knowledge of your will and your purpose? That would be a mockery of all the days of your life, wouldn't it?

Well, perhaps it isn't a loss that your mind wandered. You accomplished nothing as a result, but perhaps you would have accomplished nothing anyway. There's a figure on the horizon. Perhaps you've been careless and let the heat get to you. But perhaps there's someone else insane enough to wander these wastes.

You should go investigate, really. Your searches so far have been frustratingly unproductive. Talking to some delirious wanderer of the sands couldn't make it any worse.

* * *

The Archsage himself.

If you ever loved your wife, surely you should kill him.

'Twas Roland that killed her, wielder of the Burning Blade, you remind yourself. That's the legend corresponding to the death of an Ice Dragon all the way over by Ostia. 'Twas Valorous Roland, not Archsage Athos.

You shouldn't care. You have no reason to care.

One General's no different from any other, just as one dragon was no different from any other to them.

But you want to leave Athos alive.

It's that the fight would be too terrible, you rationalize. If you died, what would be your worth? You could never make her death up to her. You could never undo it. You could never bring the children back. You could never pay the penance for your sins - your sins of incompetence and weakness. And better that you had _never_ existed, than that you existed and failed.

But it's not that, is it?

It's your old weakness. Not of power, but of the will.

He's an idealist. And you curse yourself for caring, and you curse yourself for knowing better and still falling into the same trap.

He tells you that you could find out all the world's mysteries together. You should laugh in his face. You should tell him you've tried your hardest to find out even _one_ mystery and it's taken you five hundred years of very little progress at all. All you've done is eliminated what doesn't work. And there will be an infinity of more things that don't work. He's mad to think he could do otherwise, or senility has worn away over the centuries at a mind whose time is slowed but not wholly stopped, or the heat's gone to his head. Regardless: he's lost his wits.

Still...

Stop smiling. You don't deserve to smile.

Stop laughing. Who gave you the right to laugh, no matter how fine his jest?

Stop feeling _happy_ , you worthless weakling. Happiness is the right of the strong. Those who can protect what matters to them. Those who can _afford_ their happiness. And who are you, to try to be otherwise?

And still it's a relief to have him present, and to no longer be alone.

You're weak. You're weak, and disgusting, and a damnable fool because you know better and still you do not change, still you persist in your rush towards weakness and disappointment and calamity.

If one man in this world deserves every misfortune that befalls him and that which he loves, it's you.

* * *

The same foolish mistake, made worse because they have the Scouring as an example. Yet they persist in their stupidity, ensconced in their delusions of peace.

Well, they have nothing else to live for, after all they loved was destroyed. This idyllic paradise is nothing but the retreat of a shattered people, determined to blind themselves to all they've lost. Or perhaps some don't even realize the magnitude of their losses, and genuinely think this is even a shadow of what they had before the world was broken.

Or perhaps you're the mad, blinded one, and you can't see anything but your own failures. Perhaps these people, making the best of what they have and giving little heed to the risks, are the sane ones in a world where nothing is certain and all things crumble in time.

Well, you're willing to accept that. You are mad, and you are unthinking, and you are blind. You can be nothing else, now. You've failed. Your purpose is decided for you – any sort of loyalty you ever had compels you down this road and gives you no choice other, no matter where it may lead. You are nothing, now. Not even a man. Simply an automaton with a purpose.

To the extent that you betray this, you are disgusting and you never meant anything in your life and you never loved her. Love is not a soft, comforting _feeling_. It's not happiness. It's not feeling as though you're whole. It's about acts. A series of actions designed for the betterment of the one you love, to aid all their best efforts and to shield them from all calamities.

And what's a worse calamity than death?

You are nothing resembling in the slightest a worthy lover if you cannot bring her back. Unless you blind yourself to everything else and live only for her, and for the children, you never _loved_. You only felt sodden with sentimentality, and all your supposed _love_ meant nothing when the test came.

You need to remember that.

Feeling sodden with sentimentality means nothing.

If ever Arcadia provoked such sentiments in you, or any man in it, you need to silence that. You cannot serve two masters.

But of course you want to. You're a cheat to the core. You want it all: this thing and also that. And you care not how or why. Were you a good and obedient man, you would have tossed away your books and lived and died a good, obedient man back in your home village, hmm?

You play with fire.

You would be the affable, witty intellectual to your fellows and the obsessed failure, bent only to one goal, in the dark.

You cannot be both, in the long run: in time, the truth will out.

But still you persist in your folly.

Whatever befalls you, you deserve it.

And perhaps if you cared about Athos, you would not involve him at all. Shove him away, retreat into your studies, return to being alone. You lived that way for so long. It would be peaceful. It would be the simplest thing, if only you had a scrap of morality and could bear to do it.

You never loved anyone at all.


End file.
